How Ernie Hernandez, Jr. Stole An Election~Part I

"CAVA, "Citizens Against Voter Abuse", issued a 4 page printout, much of it dealing with the Ruben Pena/Ernie Hernandez, Jr. voter fraud trial 6/2/10. I was unable to reproduce the printouts with the size and clarity necessary for them to be readable on the blog. So, quotes from the CAVA printout and two articles from the archives of the "Brownsville Herald" are essentially my sources for this article. Any quotes from CAVA or the Herald will be acknowleged as such. Other statements are simply my commentary.

Ernie Hernandez, Jr. is not the only corrupt public official in Brownsville. Many of us would place him on a list of current and former officials including Jason Hilts, Conrado Cantu, Abe Limas, Jim Solis, Gilberto Hinojosa. Personally, I would add former Mayor Pat Ahumada to that list, although a jury once disagreed and another time couldn't decide. Rating the degree of hurt and harm the above have inflicted on our community is a subjective exercise, but the wounds are deep and longlasting.

In the bars and coffee shops of our easy-going community, we laugh off Ernie's indiscretions. "That's just old Ernie", we say. "He always gets his slice of the pie." But people get hurt. You may know an honest, hardworking man or woman who could have actually passed the civil service test someone took for Ernie's brother-in-law Robert Cadriel and benefited from a steady job as a guard at our international bridges. Or you may have known honest souls who wanted to provide our city and county with wrecking, printing or vending services without having to compete with longtime politico Ernie for those opportunities.


ASSAULT ON OUR DEMOCRACY


Those ethical and legal violations do not compare with stealing an election, an offense that goes to the core of our democracy: free, honest, fair elections where each vote counts. That's what we preach to other countries, what new citizens are told, what our universities document historically, what our soldiers fight for, but it is not what we get in Brownsville. Our election process is undermined, sabotaged, perverted and scammed by those who illegally harvest votes. The opportunity for fraud comes from a seemingly humane provision allowing the elderly and disabled who may be unable to physically travel to a polling place to simply mail their votes in.

Politiqueras prey upon these vulnerable ones by filling out the mail-in ballots for them, forging their signatures. Sometimes, the feeble are simply tricked or fooled, but often the ballots are simply filled out in someone's kitchen with the blinds drawn and the perpetrator's lips sealed.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE

The obvious circumstantial evidence for fraudulent use of mail-in ballots in an overwhelming discrepancy between regular and mail-in ballots AND/OR an overwhelming discrepancy between one candidate's mail-ins and another's. This circumstantial evidence was apparent in the runoff election between Ruben Pena and Ernie Hernandez, Jr. on April 13, 2010. Pena outpolled Hernandez in the primary but did not get a majority, thus a runoff. Again, Pena beat Hernandez in the runoff regular vote, but got stomped by Hernandez in the MAIL-IN VOTE. Pena lined up witnesses, took the matter to court. The sequence of events that followed shamed our city, the local Democratic Party and sullied our democracy.

First, the voting totals as reported by CAVA:

EARLY VOTE

Pena . . . . . . . . . . 1,166

Hernandez. . . . . . . . 1,103



ELECTION DAY, PRIMARY VOTES

Pena . . . . . . . . . . . 910

Hernandez. . . . . . . . . 816



RUN-OFF ELECTION VOTES

Pena . . . . . . . . . . .1,863

Hernandez. . . . . . . . .1,701


MAIL-IN VOTES

HERNANDEZ . . . . . . . . . 240

Pena . . . . . . . . . . . . 34




In the next segment we will deal with how the selection of a judge to hear this case may have influenced the outcome as well as quotes from Ruben Pena and David Hockema